art films. The fact that investment returns cannot be guaranteed made art films less popular amongst filmmakers. Other major reasons for decline One of the major reasons for the decline of the parallel cinema in India is that the F.F.C. or the National Film Development Corporation of India did not seriously look into the distribution or exhibition of these films. The mainstream exhibition system did not pick up these films because these films did not have the so-called 'entertainment value' that they were looking for. There was a talk of building small theatres for such film, but there was no serious attempt made to realise this alternative mode of exhibition. Thus, it left to a few Film Societies to screen these film; that too on a single screening basis. The advent of television and its popularity saw the film society movement decline. Gradually, the government reduced the patronage of such films, for they had only unseen films to be shown on their balance sheets. The Parallel Cinema in its true sense was always on the fringes of the mainstream cinema. Since most of the parallel cinema rejected the regressive worldview that was largely embodied the mainstream cinema they never found acceptance in the mainstream production, distribution and exhibition system. With an absence of an alternative exhibition system or an art house circuit as it is called in the west, many of the off beat films made by present generation film makers like Sushant Mishra, Himanshu Khatua, Ashish Avikunthak, Murali Nair, Amitabh Chakraborty, Paresh Kamdar, Priya Krishnaswamy, Vipin Vijay, Ramchandra PN, Ashwini Mallik, Anand Subramanian, Sanjivan Lal, Amit Dutta, Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni, Gurvinder Singh, Bela Negi have never had a large audience. Resurgence The term "parallel cinema" has started being applied to off-beat films produced in Bollywood, where art films have begun experiencing a resurgence. This led to the emergence of a distinct genre known as Mumbai noir, urban films reflecting social problems in the city of Mumbai. The introduction of Mumbai noir was marked by Ram Gopal Varma's Satya (1998). However the Mumbai noir is a genre that is not considered artistic in ambition even though it concentrates on realistic portrayal of the Mumbai underworld; these are generally commercial films. Other modern examples of art films produced in India which are classified as part of the parallel cinema genre include Rituparno Ghosh's Utsab (2000) and Dahan (1997), Mani Ratnam's Yuva